Sunday, 27 November 2011

0.3% - the difference between Labour and Lib - Tory spending plans

Friday's Newsnight contained a piece which looked at the difference between the Con-Dem spending plans and Labour's. They claimed that there was around £5bn difference (or 0.3% of GDP) - the quote from the iPlayer website says: "Emily Maitlis asks is there really much difference between Labour and Tory when it comes to the cuts?"

Given the significance of the claim in the face of the rhetoric between Balls and Osborne I am surprised that little has been written about it. After a fair bit of Googling, it looks like The Spectator has the only commentary on it (accompanied by one of the scariest photoshopped pictures I have seen). The Spectator has run the blog as Fraser Nelson was interviewed but why has no-one else.

More analysis of their spending plans is needed to really show just how close they are but as the Spectator reports, they don't like to quote figures and prefer to keep the arguements based on rhetoric. A more cynical person might suggest that this is done to deliberately mislead the electorate into believing there is a difference between Labour and the Lib/Tories.

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